In 1973, I was in ninth grade. I remember hearing that abortion was being made legal, and when I understood what an abortion was, I got angry. I don't remember anyone at church ever saying anything. Every now and then, I heard a rumor at school that someone had an abortion. Many of my friends wore bracelets, like the POW bracelets, for those lost to abortion. We knew that an abortion killed a baby, because humans give birth to other humans. We were all virgins at the time.

In the next year, my attitude toward abortion changed, just a little. You see when you are sexually active, such things become more of a reality. I was fourteen and going steady with a boy who was seventeen. I fell for the classic line, "If you really love me...". I knew in my heart, if I ever became pregnant, I could not have an abortion. My mother at some time (although she and my dad exercised very little parental authority over my dating) had told me never to come home pregnant. So I had decided suicide/homicide was the only way out, if I was to get pregnant.

In the next few years, I gave in a little more. "If you have to have an abortion, I guess that is okay for you, but I could never do it" was my official position as I went off to college three years after Roe. It was that counsel that I directly gave two friends, and had indirectly given many. I myself, slipped a little more as I experimented with birth control pills and an evil IUD. I became more promiscuous and cared less and less what happened to me. Alcohol was a great assistant to the way I was going. It was easy to do something you probably would not remember anyway. When you did remember, you could lie and say you did not. I tired of the university party scene. I quit college, came home and got a job. The scenery changed but the lifestyle did not.

It was in this intoxicated state that I married my first husband, whom I will call Mike. We were party pals. Everyone else was off at college and we were 'home alone'. He often did hard drugs and now I see why he was running.

At the old age of seventeen, Mike's father had died an alcoholic and his girlfriend had been shipped off to New York for a second trimester abortion (they were not legal where we lived then). He told me about life with his father; of having to go into his hangouts to try to persuade him to come home, etc. But Mike never talked about the situation with the girlfriend, whom I will call Bethany. When we were dating, she would call and act so strange. It made me mad because Mike and I were dating. This had been about four years earlier.

All of this took place when Mike and Bethany were in high school (I was already in college). My brother was Mike's friend and saw the whole story take place. He told part of it to me.... Bethany was six months pregnant and showing when their parents found out. Her parents told Mike never to come around, running him off with a gun at one point.

My brother did not go into specific details, but said everyone at school knew what had happened. Bethany went off the deep end, he said. He told of her coming to school with claw marks on her face where she had clawed her own flesh. Back when my brother told me, neither of us understood why.

Mike's mother and Bethany's father had agreed to each pay half for the expensive 'trip' to New York , if her father would actually see that the plans were carried out. Bethany returned mentally disturbed and within a couple of years, Mike was treated for mental breakdown. His mother convinced Mike it was due to his father's death. A couple of years later, she would procure an abortion for another of her grandchildren, Mike's sister's out-of-wedlock child.

The psychological therapy ended when Mike threw a chair at the guy who told him he had hated his father. The drugs were how Mike handled life, smoking marijuana constantly, with weekend boosts of MDA. It was at this point, we were married. Four years, one miscarriage and one child later, the marriage ended.

I never thought of divorce as a possibility. Married life was okay; we had normal disagreements. He continued with the drugs, and I often participated.

In January, after three years of marriage, I unexpectedly found out I was pregnant. I had begged for children, but Mike always replied, "not yet..." I was excited, but my excitement was brief. I miscarried the day after the doctor confirmed the pregnancy. This crushed Mike. At the hospital, he collapsed in his mothers' arms. I felt that my body had betrayed me. One of the nurses told me not to go back on the pill, as the doctor suggested, but get pregnant as soon as I could. She said my body knew more than the doctor.

In March, after begging Mike again for a baby, I was pregnant. Life got rocky during the pregnancy, but I just guessed it was my hormones. We had never discussed the fundamental things that should be worked out before marriage, like our religious beliefs, ideals about parenting, etc.

Mike told me that he would leave me if I wasn't pregnant. He stayed until our child was nine months old. Looking back, I realize he became very suspicious of everything I did. He questioned where I went and how I spent money (especially if it was for the baby). I did run through money, and I'd throw it up to him that I worked and made more than he did. I rationalized and he pulled away further than ever. I believe this is when he was having an affair with the woman he would later marry.

We tried life in separate rooms, which ended in separate homes. He moved out and I was glad to see him go. He filed for divorce and tried to take our child in a custody suit. He lost; we all did. He never made any serious attempt to reconcile. I wrestled with what was right and what was best to do.

I remarried two years after our divorce. He married the woman he had been seeing ("a friend" he would tell me) I believe, ever since I was pregnant.

To make an already too long story short, a few years ago, I began volunteering at a CPC. I learned of all of the side affects of abortion. I realized that the woman he married had taken my place as a mother figure to him (she is older and much better at the role than I). She has a son, by her previous husband. Her son is, to some degree, the son Mike never had. He is the same age as Mike's child that was aborted. People who counsel recognize the desire of people who lose a child to 'replace' that child with another, as a way to cope.

So someone else's abortion was a key player in our family's divorce. A way to 'fix' Mike's past cost my child her father. The irony is almost too much to think about. It has been over twenty years since this abortion and now my teenage child is dealing with its impact, even though she knows nothing of it.

The good news is, God is merciful and has given me a passion for the unborn and their mothers.